Merge of sources

Merge of sources

I have some titles of sources entered multiple times. I understand how to merge two sources. But in some cases I have perhaps 50 items listed. This is from the information in the records hints I took from Ancestry.For example: Sweden Indexed Birth records 1880-1920 Sweden Births from the Swedish death index Social Security Death Index etc.Is there any way to select and merge them all in one batch, rather than do it one by one?Thank youBetty Dahlstedt

Re: Merge of sources

I don't know about you but when I went through this I found that while the sources appeared to be the same, there were minor difference that I considered important, A mass merge would have lost that information.

I started with FTM Version 16, and had put qualifying in formation in some places I should not have. Without going into the source record and moving those parts to other places they would have been lost.

While it was true for the sources, to illustrate, I will use a place. In location I may have put the correct information but in the description field I may have put a comment that had nothing to do with the place and was a comment on the person themselves. ie name may have been Joe not George.

I went through each source and place and cleaned up the references. It was a big task but my data base is better today for doing it.

Re: Merge of sources

I was afraid that it was one at a time. I just have so many entries from some sources, like the different census years in the USA. I may have 50 entries for 1910, 75 for 1920 etc. I just need the source title listed once. I also spent days working on place names. I wanted it one particular way, but, FTM (and Ancestry) had other ideas. The hints come in a variety of ways, so I rarely use them other than stepping stones. I hope that there is a solution somewhere.Betty Dahlstedt

Re: Merge of sources

In my mind the solution is, "don't take short cuts" and by this I mean do all your own work and do not allow programs to tell you what they want to enter.

I don't let FTM enter places or sources I enter them all by hand. I set guidelines that I follow for data entry. It has been noted on this blog that sometimes hints will generate different source titles when they are from the same source. This is due in part because what one person sees as two sources another person sees as the same source.

Even for me sometime I will read the source and think I should name it one thing then after reviewing my source list I will see that I did enter another source with a slightly different title.

Re: Merge of sources

Words to live by. Only reason to have multiple, identical "sources", AFAIK, is for the same source in a different repository, each of which I label to reflect the repository (eg. 1910 United States Federal Census [Family History Library]). ACOM source is, of course, the exception.

Re: Merge of sources

BrklynBridge said: "Only reason to have multiple, identical "sources", AFAIK, is for the same source in a different repository (of which I have many)."

Even with two repositories the same source can be used, or at least the GEDCOM standard v5.5.1 says this is the way it should work. I've never actually looked to see if FTM supports this construct, but I do use it all the time in my primary genealogy data_store (Database).

I guess I'll need to check this tonight, or I'll list this as yet another thing not support correctly in FTM.

Re: Merge of sources

"each of which I label to reflect the repository (eg. 1910 United States Federal Census [Family History Library]). ACOM source is, of course, the exception."

Why? If you want to say that the information comes from a different Repository you should add a repository record. The source will remain the same, just the place where you found the source changes i.e. "the repository".

Some will argue that you don't need to have a repository for sources that can be found in multiple places, and I half agree, yet for me I like to record the repository anyway so that when I travel to a library in Germany, USA, Norway, England, Iceland etc, or any city that may have information, I like to know what I have found in that library in the past so I can go to it again. In the repository_citation I keep the local library call number so I can actually call the library or archive and request the book or document before I arrive and they can pull it from the stack. Many archives like knowing that I'm coming and what resource I need a day or two before I come. This way thay can, at their conveniance, get information. In some cases the librarian knows me and finds additional stuff that they think will help.

Re: Merge of sources

ACOM-generated citations already designate ACOM as the repository in their citation-building process. I just treat it as a default repository. Changing every ACOM citation to redundantly identify ACOM as the repository would be nightmarish in scope.